But rock took a back seat in the last two decades because of the predominance of electronic music, as well as the emergence of strains like grunge rock and hip-hop, which did not appeal to mainstream Indian viewers.

Not everyone has been content with this story focusing, as it does, on how one 1990s set of mid-west grunge rock artists blended rock with the country music of the small town America where they lived.

‘In the midst of all this,’ he writes of the era of Generation X and grunge rock, ‘satire alone could be safely, unequivocally embraced, because it acknowledged the sanctity of nothing at all.’

Origin

Before it became associated with rock music, grunge was generally used to mean ‘grime or dirt’. It was formed from grungy, a word that was coined in the 1960s, probably by blending grubby (from the state you get in when you grub (Middle English) or dig) and dingy (a M18th word of unknown origin, but perhaps related to dung). In the 1990s grunge became the term for a style of rock music in which the guitar is played raucously and the lyrics delivered in a lazy vocal style. Among well-known practitioners of grunge were Seattle-based groups such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam.